The creature shrieked with such ferocity that Jerusa’s teeth involuntarily clenched. She had a sudden urge to stomp the beast’s head to paste, but that would only make matters worse. While destroying a savage’s brain will render it “disabled”, fire is the only way to destroy one without causing it to explode in a cloud of spores that infect anything it touches. She’d just have to wait for Taos or one of the other pyro-kinetic vampires to show up and finish the job.
Another of the savages—this one a short, fat man missing both hands—lunged in. Jerusa pivoted to the side out of his way, but not enough to dodge the two that rushed in right after him.
One hit her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. The other hit her from the side, high on the shoulder. The three of them went tumbling across the ground. The savages tried their best to latch onto her with hands and teeth, but Jerusa managed to lodge the tip of her skewer into the ground and the momentum pole-vaulted her out of their grasp.
Jerusa landed on her feet and, in a fluid move, brought the handle of her skewer down on one savage, smashing his shoulder and collar bone, driving him to the ground, while at the same time bringing the back blade upward, splitting another savage from his groin to his breastbone. The short, fat savage came within inches of biting her neck, but she shifted to the side just in time and sent him reeling with a hard right hook to the head.
Jerusa moved fast, not giving the savages a moment to recover. First, she skewered the fat savage, pinning him face down. He squalled as he attempted to push upwards and dislodge himself. Jerusa hoped she could trust the weapon’s design because with this many savages, if they started to free themselves before she could burn them, she didn’t stand much of a chance.
Next, she skewered the savage with the broken shoulder, but the other savages were coming for her, so she had to do it on the run. She pierced him through the throat, which was no good. If he ripped his own head off trying to get free, then he’d explode in a cloud of spores for sure. Jerusa swung around, kicking a couple of the mindless savages in the face, but the four smarter ones dodged her easily enough. She jammed another section of the skewer through the leg of the one that had been pierced through the neck. Hopefully, that would hold him.
The savage that had been split up the middle attacked her from behind, knocking the skewer out of her hand. He wrapped his arms around her, but they were slick with blood and she dropped her weight and slipped right through. She spun as she dropped, reached between the beast’s legs and grabbed a handful of dangling entrails. She continued her spin, dragging him off his feet and launched him into the other mindless savages coming for her.
The savages rolled out of the way, their speed as fierce as a cobra’s, and in the end, she managed only to hit the one with no legs.
Jerusa snatched up her skewer, threw it like a javelin and pierced both the legless savage and the savage that she had nearly split in half. The power of her throw carried both backward and the tip of the skewer lodged in a crack in a bolder jutting from the ground. Jerusa rushed to them, leaping over one savage and dodging another, took the skewer in hand, twisted the handle and locked the pair to the rock.
The four smart savages had waited long enough. They had watched and understood now what Jerusa was capable of. With a chorus of screams, they drove the remaining mindless savages toward her, while fanning out around her.
If she didn’t move fast, they would fence her in. She was running out of sections for her skewer, and it was only a matter of time before the ones she had pinned freed themselves. The savages blocked her from rushing further into the desert. Her only choice was to head back into town, back toward the humans in the car.
One of the savages leapt into the air, meaning to take her from above. Jerusa slid to a stop, kicking up a great cloud of grit and sand, then turned and planted her foot square in his chest. His bones shattered in a sickening crunch, but still the creature crawled for her. Jerusa stomped his arms and legs into near pulp, leaving him immobilized. Savages don’t heal like vampires, and they can’t regenerate lost flesh unless they take if from another.
Back at the car, the two humans still sat in their seats, too afraid to brave a night full of monsters. Jerusa had intended to run past them and lead the savages further into the center of town, but one of the smart ones struck her from behind and sent her tumbling into the side of the car.
Jerusa rolled to her feet, started down the road, but slid to a stop when the woman let out a terrified scream. The two remaining mindless savages were on the car, ripping the roof back like the wrapping of a present, while the four more dangerous savages continued to advance on her.
The army of ghosts motioned for her to follow them. They would lead her safely through the streets. Jerusa started to follow them, but Alicia and Foster just stood there watching the humans.
Jerusa sighed. “Okay, fine.”
She rushed full speed toward the car. The four savages matched her speed. She took to the air, hoping to vault over them, but they, too, leapt to meet her. Jerusa planted her foot in the chest of the first savage, kicking off and sending it hurtling backward. The force sent her to the side, but not out of harm’s way. She skewered a female savage through the midsection and pushed off of her. She snatched another by the hair and flipped over top of him. She was almost clear, but the fourth savage caught her by the waist and they tumbled to the earth in a constricting knot.
Jerusa landed on her back and the air exploded from her lungs. The savage was on her instantly. She caught him by the throat, avoiding a bite by a hair’s breadth. The other three savages wasted no time getting to her. Even the two savages on the car abandoned their human prey and moved to partake in the better feast. The four savages that were whole had no need of her flesh. The only part of her that they required was her brain cells to rebuild their own damaged minds. But the two others would be just as happy gnawing off her arms and legs.
They crawled up on her like a group of hideous giant spiders. Jerusa waited as long as she could. “Now, Alicia,” she screamed. “Do it now!”
The ghosts surrounding her began to glow with a bright combined aura. The savages, vulnerable to light and now able to see the spirits due to Jerusa’s touch, reeled and hissed. And, at that moment, Alicia put her hand on Jerusa’s chest, right over the scar, and the world melted into a blinding explosion of pain.
CHAPTER THREE
Alicia’s spectral electricity burned like millions of white-hot needles piercing Jerusa all over. Every cell of her body felt as though it might explode. She had never known an agony as intense as this—even sunlight didn’t cause this much pain. Every time Alicia hit her with that inexplicable jolt of energy, it was worse than the time before.
She could only hope that all the savages had been touching her and that they had been hit as hard.
Jerusa rolled onto her hands and knees. There was a dull ringing in her ears and she couldn’t muster the strength to open her eyes. She sensed the savages writhing on the ground around her, but they wouldn’t stay that way for long. She needed to get up. She needed to find her skewer.
A pair of petite hands, soft and warm, slipped beneath her armpits and gently stood her up. There was no scent, no pulse. Jerusa didn’t need her eyes open to know that it was Alicia.
Jerusa could only see ghosts. She could neither hear nor touch them. But Alicia wasn’t your average ghost.
Alicia took Jerusa by the shoulders and shook her hard. Jerusa opened her eyes and the pair flashed each other a weary smile. The spectral electricity seemed to be just as painful to Alicia as it was to Jerusa.
Alicia’s eyes widened and she flinched. Jerusa dropped to the ground without question, and a savage sailed overhead, passing right through the ghost girl in the blue dress.
Jerusa spun and delivered a crushing back kick to another approaching savage, sending it soaring into the pair of mindless savages. Her skewer rested in a pile of scree kicked up by the car. Jerusa ran for her weapon, but just as she rea
ched for it, one of the smart savages kicked it hard enough to launch it up to the roof of a nearby building. She immediately spun, kicked the savage’s legs out from under him and rolled away from him.
She was in it now. No weapon. No way to fend off the savages.
Jerusa rushed to the car and wrenched the door off of its hinges. The woman inside screamed and scuttled into the man, but Jerusa didn’t have time to deal with her at the moment. She held the door by the top of the window and swung it around, smashing into a savage. The door buckled, sending a shockwave up her arm, and the savage tumbled backward.
She swung the door again, this time parallel to the ground. The next savage caught the door full in the face and a great spray of blood splattered on the hood and the shattered windshield of the car. The savage’s head turned all the way around backward and fell behind its shoulders. Jerusa gasped. For a moment, she thought she had decapitated the beast, which would have triggered the spores. Instead, the creature wandered off, disoriented, struggling to return its head to its rightful place.
She tried to smash another savage, but this one dodged her attack, darted in and ripped the door out of her hand. Jerusa jumped into the air, planting both feet in the creature’s chest and sent him rocketing through the wall of one of the buildings.
Jerusa’s arms had gone numb and rubbery. Her legs felt like bags of sand. She was breathing hard and a burning stitch twisted from her navel to her neck. The remaining savages surrounded her.
“Don’t you guys ever get tired?”
The savages answered by rushing her.
Jerusa ripped the hood from the car and tossed it like a Frisbee. She didn’t wait to see if she hit her target or not. Instead, she returned to the car and plucked the engine out of the frame, hoisting it over her head as she turned. With a cry of fury, she smashed the engine down on top of the last of the mindless savages as it rushed in to tackle her.
“Oh no,” Jerusa said, looking down at the ground before her. She had managed to hit, at least, one of the savages with the hood of the car. Hit him so well, in fact, that it had ripped him in two at about mid-chest.
The bottom half of the savage swelled, the bulbous sections ripping through the blood-stained clothing, while its upper half lay prone, dazed by the injury. The skin of the lower half turned as black as the night and the blood oozing out congealed and pulsated. Jerusa didn’t have any time. A cloud of spores would engulf them at any moment.
Jerusa ran to the car, her vampiric speed taking her the short distance so quickly that both the man and woman screamed in terror. She reached in, ripped the woman’s seatbelt off, plucked her out, and then went back for the man. The humans kicked and screamed, but she tossed one over each shoulder, then started to escape through the desert.
She made it maybe five steps before the last of the smart savages appeared behind the car, pushing the wreck with incredible force. The car crashed into Jerusa’s back, knocking her to the ground. She managed to toss the humans out of the way before the car ran over her, the front tire stopping between her shoulder blades.
The car was lighter than it would have been with its engine still intact, but even so, it had hit her pretty hard, and she couldn’t get out from under its weight fast enough. The pulsating blob that had once been a savage’s lower torso was about to explode. The upper half had righted itself and was now crawling toward her.
She closed her eyes. Becoming a savage was probably the worst thing that could happen to her. She only hoped that she would be trapped under the car until the sun came up and finished her off.
A blast of hot, dry air hit Jerusa in the face as though a dragon was sighing. A bright flash lit the darkness behind her closed eyelids and the savages screeched in pain and horror.
A deep and boisterous laugh filled the night as Taos jumped down from atop a nearby building, twin orbs of fire hovering above each hand. He extended both hands and great fountains of flame shot forth, engulfing the disfigured lower torso just as it popped. It exploded in a burst of green flame, bright as the sun, before fizzling into a column of ash carried away by the wind.
The savage’s upper half paused for a moment to screech at the bright light, then continued to crawl toward Jerusa faster than most mortals could run. Taos darted forward, kicked the diminished savage into the air, and hit him with a ball of fire. Nothing but cinders hit the ground.
Taos hoisted the car off of Jerusa, and she rolled out from beneath the tire. “I’m not sure,” he said with a mischievous half smile that made his chiseled jaw line even more pronounced, “but I think this puts me back in the lead…by two.”
Jerusa smiled despite the pain rippling through her body. She and Taos had a running bet about who could save the other from danger more. First one to get five saves in a row would be crowned champion. If Taos won, Jerusa had to kiss him (and not just a peck on the lips). If she won, Taos had to shave off his long, blond locks every night for a decade.
“Keep dreaming, Goldilocks,” she said. “I’m gonna make a golden throw rug out of all that hair.”
Taos laughed. “Did you lose something?” He tossed her skewer to her. “I think that should count as a save. That’s three.”
Jerusa caught the skewer, raised it above her head and tossed it like a spear. The blades whistled past Taos’s surprised face, pinning the savage that had its head turned around to the wall of one of the buildings.
Taos kicked the dirt. “All right, fine. We’ll call it two.” He flexed his hands, summoned more fire, incinerated the savage with the backward head, then moved the conflagration over to the savage crushed and writhing beneath the car’s engine.
Savage howls filled the night.
“How many are out here?” Taos asked.
“I counted twelve. I think they’ve all been pinned down. Be careful, though. Four of them are not so dumb anymore.”
Taos nodded to the two humans huddled together in the dark. “Any chance your ghost pal will let you feed. You did just take on twelve savages by yourself. You deserve a reward.”
“I’m thinking no.”
Disappointment lingered behind his eyes. “I’m gonna go light up the other savages. I’ll bring the tips of your skewer back.”
“Thanks.”
Taos blew her a kiss. The wall she had pinned the backward-head savage to took on the hungry fire. He admired his handiwork, a broad smile spanning his face, then vanished into the desert, leaving a wake of dust trailing behind him. Small fires erupted in the distance, followed by the dying cries of the savages.
She could sense the approaching sun like an ache in an old woman’s bones from an impending storm. It was too dangerous to hide here and they were a good distance away from their daylight sanctuary. They needed to finish their business and get going. Jerusa went to gather her skewer before the fire engulfed the whole building. As she pulled her weapon free, a shadow flashed to her right.
Jerusa dropped onto her back, thrusting the thin blade upwards just as a savage swooped down on her from above. The skewer caught the savage mid-chest, and he slid down onto the four prongs. Jerusa had pinned too many savages, and as a result, the skewer had been vastly shortened. She extended her arms, holding the weapon by the farthest end of the handle, but it wasn’t enough to keep her out of range from the savage’s attacks.
Jerusa turned her head side to side, but she needed both hands to keep him off of her, and couldn’t protect her face. Instead of striking her, though, he took her head in his hands and forced her to look up at him.
His eyes were filled with blood and looked almost black in the firelight. His flesh held the greenish tint of rot, with serpents of black veins swimming beneath the skin. His withered lips were curled back to the gum line and he pushed his chin forward in what looked to be the world’s creepiest smile. Each of his bicuspids came to a point. He had not been one of the infected humans in the quarantine community. He had been a vampire. Perhaps the vampire custodian of Sheol. His deadly teeth parted and a voice
spilled out like corruption from a rotting corpse.
At first, Jerusa couldn’t understand him. His voice wasn’t any sound a living creature could produce. It was more like a cacophony of growls and gurgles manipulated in a way that mimicked a true language. The beast repeated himself, and this time, Jerusa heard a single word. A name. And her heart froze mid beat.
“Shufah,” he said. A string of bloody slobber slithered from the corner of his mouth and landed on Jerusa’s chin. It took all she had not to vomit. “Whhheeerrrree issss Shhhuffaaah?” The savage repeated his question.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Ask the Light Bearers.”
The savage tightened his grip on her head. “Yoooouuuu liiiieeeee. Sssssuuuuuhhhhaaaaillll wwaaannnnttttss hhhheerrrr.”
So it was true. It was Suhail, Shufah’s twin brother, now a savage by his sister’s own hand, who was laying waste to the quarantine communities. But if Suhail was really raising an army of savages, why were they not spreading across the country like a virus? How could such a large group of savages move about undetected by both the Hunters and the augurs of the Watchtower?
“He’ll have to get in line.” Jerusa clenched her eyes shut. With a growl, she forced herself into a sitting position, heaving the skewer up over her head. The savage’s thumbs sought out her eyes. The ghosts around her began to glow, and the savage roared at the spectral light. Alicia touched the scar on Jerusa’s chest, but Jerusa shouted, “No, I’m fine.”
Jerusa found her feet, despite the thrashing savage, and with a loud scream, she ran blindly toward the heat of the burning building.
The savage, realizing Jerusa intended to dump him in the inferno, released his grip and tried to push himself off of the skewer. Jerusa opened her eyes just in time to catch sight of something shiny on the savage’s chest through his shredded shirt. She turned the skewer downward, pinning him to the ground with such force that she nearly vaulted over him.
Jerusa leaned on the skewer, not trusting the loose earth to hold the tip. The savage’s arms were at his sides and she stood upon his wrists. He coughed as steady streams of black blood poured from the corners of his mouth. He laid there, docile, almost patiently, while she leaned down and carefully pulled his shirt back. Though he remained motionless, it seemed as though his demon grin spread even wider.
Perpetual Creatures, Volumes 1-3: A Vampire and Ghost Thriller Series Page 59
